FAQs

There are many definitions of social value.  The best definition of the Social Value which is reported by using the Impact Evaluation Standard is ‘the value to society that an organisation creates beyond income or profit, including community wellbeing, economic benefit and environmental improvement’. 

It is possible to utilise the IES metrics to report only your social value in terms of outputs i.e. the number of hours, number of £ etc.  However, the full value of the framework is only derived when correctly applying the ‘proxy’ values contained within the framework – proxy values are indicative financial measures of the social, economic and environmental impact your organisation has made. Although these are not exact £ values, using them enables you to value your Social Value in the same terms/language as pure financial value i.e. a common reporting language that people understand, and also brings consistency to your reporting so that a comparison can be made between organisations, projects and contracts.

The IES is available to you in a variety of ways. To appraise the IES for non commercial use, please contact us. To use the IES in a commercial setting, that requires a license. Please contact us to learn more.

We welcome, public, private and academic contribution to the standard, to get involved, please contact us.

The Impact Evaluation Standard is designed to champion modern organisation-level social value and social impact measurement, appraisal and reporting.

Existing social value frameworks are becoming outdated or have obscure licensing models.

The Impact Evaluation Standard is the only available standard that was built from the ground up to align with the UK Government’s Social Value Model. The breadth of 109 metrics is designed to enable both reporting to meet specific contract/project KPIs that your organisation may be committed to AND to capture the entire social value that your organisation as a whole creates. 

The Impact Evaluation Standard is overseen by a Steering Committee of industry experts and thought leaders to ensure that the framework is robust yet accessible for organisations of any size in any industry sector.

The Impact Evaluation Standard is directly aligned with the UK Government’s PPN 06/20, the UN SDGs and also maps to common ESG reporting areas.

Please refer to the methodology and steering committee sections of the site.

The current generation of the IES is UK centric. However, separate versions for the Republic of Ireland,  United States and Australia are in development. Please contact us to be kept up to date on new versions of the standard for specific locales.